Get to Know Dr. Fourie Viljoen from Pierre Van Ryneveld Veterinary Clinic

Veterinary professionals are pet-people, and we often enter this career under the impression that vets work with animals. That myth is one I regularly bust for prospective students: Vets need to be psychologists, paediatricians and psychics for not only the pet, but the parent too!

My name is Lielie Fourie-Viljoen, raised by and helping raise Pierre van Ryneveld Veterinary hospital. I got to know the insides of our profession from a very young age. My parents opened the practice 3 years before I was born, and I grew up with it. This granted me the privilege of understanding the complicated yet beautiful relationship of trust between the pet, the pet parent, and the veterinarian. Vets may think the blood and guts of the industry are literal surgeries, but more often, we have to look at the insides of broken humans in their most brittle states, with a kind and caring eye. We can only cure if we care.

Growing up in a veterinary household engulfs you. I have wrestled lion cubs and wrangled labradors. I could name the cardinal signs of inflammation before I could count and developed a grading scale for cats’ catnip reactions for a school project. Anyone who has heard me talking about the endocrinology of critical illness, echocardiography, or the chromaffin cell, will attest to my nerdiness galore. Talking about my Master’s degree in the cortisol and thyroxine changes in snake-envenomed dogs can get me all hyped up. On a serious note – evidence based clinical practice is not only a nerdy nice-to-have, but critical to caring properly. Even more critical is a highly skilled, experienced team that improves the care provided to each patient through collaboration and genuine interest in the intricacies of medicine.

At Pierre van Ryneveld Veterinary Hospital, we are lucky enough to still live this dream. In a modern, isolated world we learn from our pets and root ourselves in the now, where real relationships are built. Even if it means losing sleep over a patient or calling your colleague up at 4AM to join you in theatre. It is all worthwhile if a patient is such a part of the family that everyone knows their name. If your colleagues laugh when you call the fourth patient that day your favourite patient ever, you know you’re in the right place. It is even worth all the heartache that comes with putting that patient to sleep.

It is a privilege to care and to cry. It is a privilege to cry with your colleagues more often than crying with your mother. Because the complicated nature of the relationships between human- and non-human animals make our profession messy, and mooi.

www.pierrevanryneveldvet.com | 0825692466 | 0126622502 | pvrvet@pierrevanryneveldvet.com